1. Empathy is Key: Naomi stresses that in order to ensure more considerate and productive encounters, CX workers must put themselves in the shoes of their customers.
2. Stay Close to the Queue: According to Naomi, leaders can stay engaged, uphold morale, and make better judgments by being actively involved with the team and customers.
3. Leverage Hybrid Teams: Naomi guarantees scalability while maintaining business identity and quality by fusing internal knowledge with outside BPO help.
4. AI as a Support Tool: While Naomi emphasizes that human control is essential to provide high-quality and individualized service, AI can undertake regular jobs.
5. Foster Remote Team Connection: Naomi emphasizes the value of fostering close bonds with coworkers in distant environments in order to preserve cooperation and workplace culture.
Meet Naomi Oriol, Director of Customer Experience at Yumi!
Yumi is the definitive source for parents seeking to understand what they are feeding their children and why, offering a science-based early childhood meal delivery program that is the most convenient and most nutritional option in the market. Yumi’s organic, worry-free nutrition snack products include bars and rice-free puffs.
Naomi describes herself as a ‘problem solver.’ She was first drawn to CX for the opportunity to find the answer to solve peoples’ problems. Being in a position to change the perception of customer experience also motivates her work. “We all know that ‘knot in your stomach’ feeling that comes when calling a company. You’re going to be transferred 6 times and need to repeat yourself,” she explains. “I love being able to ‘redo’ that story. And at the end of the interaction, the customer can’t believe how easy it was to find a resolution.” In fact, she aims to make CX easier for not just customers, but also her agents. “Things can get really complicated in customer experience. I find it exciting to boil everything down to a really simple process that’s simple for everyone to do,” she says.
Yumi transitioned to a fully remote company during COVID. Naomi heads a small internal team, which is supported by a BPO partnership in Mexico of 9 agents. Naomi credits this hybrid structure to her team’s success - internal members handle brand-specific issues, policy, and high-touch tickets while offshore agents are available for scalability. “My internal agents are more versed in our tone and all the things that make us who we are. Our BPO also shoulders a lot of weight when it comes to training, on-boarding, and managing the day-to-day. So, I’m a fan of doing it both ways,” she adds.
Building an Empathetic, Adaptable Team
The key trait Naomi looks for in new hires is empathy. Being a good CX agent requires more than just working in a queue and checking tagging tickets, she stresses. “You have to have the innate ability to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and do what is in their best interest.” Because each situation is different, working in CX also demands quick-thinking and adaptability. For this reason, Naomi includes a role-playing exercise during interviews with potential candidates. “You never know what a customer is going to say or how they are going to react. Even if you don’t have the answer immediately, being able to segue into a follow up response is a great skill to have.”
Being a Hands-On Leader
Naomi’s experience as a CX agent drives her to be a hands-on leader. She knows what CX demands of her agents and would at no time want them to feel alone. Never too far away from the queue to handle an escalating ticket, “I’m there not only to carry some of the weight for my team, but also as a supportive resource for them,” she reassures. Consequently, a leader who stands by their agents and isn’t afraid to get in the trenches helps with morale.
CX Goals: Fostering Connection in a Remote E-Commerce Company
Asked what her goals for CX at Yumi are, Naomi says that due to the company’s remote structure, she is focused on building her team with empathy. She asks, “How do you keep work culture going if you’re not in the office and chatting it up at the fridge during lunch anymore?” Finding unique ways to foster meaningful relationships with her agents (and other departments) where everyone is collaborating on strategies to reach the same goals inspires her. “Being able to grow and connect in a remote world excites me,” she adds.
Because Yumi’s CX Team is interacting with customers at every level, Naomi understands that they are on the forefront of valuable data. Collecting and communicating information about customer sentiment to the rest of the company can be challenging. “Sometimes the connection gets lost,” she admits. “So, I get excited when I can tell a story with the data that I’ve been collecting. And then give insight into what we can do to turn things around and make them better.”
AI and Customer Experience
Naomi views AI as a useful tool in E-Commerce but maintains that human oversight is necessary when applied to CX. They use chatbots for self-service, to answer basic questions, and solve ‘one-and-done’ interactions. “This frees up our agents to handle high-touch tickets and more complex situations,” she notes. Internally, AI is employed to assist agents by making real-time suggestions, troubleshooting, and finding product information. Naomi uses AI to analyze data related to customer feedback, sentiment, and team performance.
When Customer Aren’t Reaching Out
For Naomi, if customers are not reaching out to a company, it can be one of two things: there’s a tech issue or the CX team (and company as whole) is doing its job. Elaborating on the latter, she says, “It’s a green flag. It means we’ve done a good job at having our FAQs as robust as possible. And any escalating trends that we noticed were addressed and resolved.”
Looking Forward: The CX Landscape in 5 to 10 years
Without the in-person interactions that take place in brick-and-mortar shops, E-Commerce companies like Yumi prioritize relating to each customer as an individual. Naomi believes the drive to personalize CX will continue to evolve through the next decade. “I see a customer’s history completely summarized allowing the agent to provide the best service for what they need while making product suggestions.” AI will continue to play a useful role for CX teams and leaders by streamlining processes, retrieving information, and analyzing data. Naomi reminds, “But always with a human in the loop to QA and make sure AI is doing what it’s supposed to be doing.”
Asked about her advice for other CX Leaders, Naomi says it’s important to stay close to the queue. She elaborates, “I never want to be too far removed from not just the day-to-day with my team, but also the day-to-day with my customers.” Because the agent’s position can feel like a revolving door and mundane at times, Naomi makes efforts to grow her member’ skills and thinking beyond taking tickets while learning about them as individuals. “Involving them in high-up situations in customer service makes them more engaged and invigorated to do their daily tasks,” she finishes.
Tech Stack
Slack “It’s a great collaboration tool. Especially now that we are all remote, Slack helps us connect and troubleshoot in real time. We have a Slack channel with our BPO – it helps me keep in the loop with them as well.”
Can’t-Live-Without-Tool? Slack. It’s a great collaboration tool. Especially now that we are all remote, Slack helps us connect and troubleshoot in real time. We have a Slack channel with our BPO – it helps me keep in the loop with them as well.
Favorite Communication Channel? It depends. For billing issues, I prefer to talk on the phone because those issues can be nuanced and complex sometimes. For an Amazon order, chatbots have helped solve my problems. But at the end of the day, it’s about meeting your customers where they are at.
Recent Podcast or Book? “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. It’s a great book about a woman who gets the opportunity to see what her life would have been if she had taken a different path during certain moments. The whole point of the story is that there is no way to say that if you made a different choice, your life would have been better. Rather, the path you are on is the path that you work on making ‘the right path.’
#1 Challenge as CX Leader? Prioritizing projects. I get excited with new challenges and want to see everything done at once. It’s important to assess and balance short-term and long-term goals. This way, you can set up a pace that allows you to achieve things without burning out yourself, or your team, and then needing to pull resources from other departments.
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